The following RSS feeds are now live with headlines from July 1, 2009 to February 19, 2010. The feeds include headlines for all of the Office and SharePoint Getting Started content, as well as the Channel 9 learning courses for SharePoint and Office.

I am one of those persons who has 25 apps running at the same time. I always have multiple instances of Explorer, VS, Office docs, and other apps running at all times. The one app I never close and I frequently visit is Outlook.

One of the neat new additions to Outlook 2010 is the the Outlook Social Connector (OSC). The Microsoft Outlook Social Connector is an add-in that surfaces social network data including friends, profiles, activities, and status information from social networks in Microsoft Outlook.

I really like the idea of bringing a lot of updates from multiple social networks sites where I have multiple personal and MSDN Office accounts to the one app where I spend a great deal of my day: Outlook.

Microsoft announced yesterday the availability of the Microsoft Outlook Social Connector (OSC) Beta (February Update) and a refresh about partnering with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace.

You can download the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector from the Microsoft Download Center. Please be sure to read the detailed instructions and if necessary remove the earlier Outlook Social Connector Beta. (More details are here)

What’s more cool about the Outlook Social Connector is that you can extend it. In addition to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Myspace providers, you’ll also be able to write your own.

This diagram shows the Outlook Social Connector provider architecture:

If you are a developer and you are interested in extending the Outlook Social Connector, I recommend that you check this blogs, articles, and resources:

MSDN article:Developing an Outlook Social Connector Provider: This article discusses the interfaces that a Microsoft Outlook Social Connector provider (OSC provider) must implement. The OSC provider extensibility interfaces provide a way for disparate social networks to show friend, activity, and relationship information in Outlook. An OSC provider component must implement the ISocialProvider, ISocialSession, ISocialProfile, and ISocialPerson interfaces. These interfaces expose methods and properties that allow the OSC to communicate with a social network independently of the APIs provided by the social network.

Additionally, as mentioned by Stephen Griffin, later on the Outlook team will be shipping the OSC as an add-in for Outlook 2007 and 2003, so you can get all that social goodness even if you’re not yet on Outlook 2010!

I’ll update this post with a link to an MSDN Dev Center landing page with more info as soon as it’s live.

In the meantime, here’s more info cross-posted from John Durant’s blog:

The Office Developer Atlas interactive training tool (built using Silverlight technology) is a great way for you to come up to speed on what developing productivity solutions with Office is all about. We've called it an atlas because it's designed to give you a series of training segments that help you orient yourself in the world of Office development.

The first three segments that we have included in the initial release of Office Developer Atlas include:

1) Making users instantly productive through VBA

2) The Microsoft Office Backstage view

3) The Microsoft Office Fluent UI (Ribbon)

In each section, you'll find a short explanatory video, an example that demonstrates the kinds of solutions you can build with the targeted technology, and links to rich content on how to convert your awareness to technical skill. Here are a couple more screenshots:

We'll be adding more modules to the training environment, and all you need is a Web browser to start using it. Enjoy, and please send your feedback and ideas for more training modules.

The upcoming release of Office and SharePoint offers a wealth of interesting new scenarios and solutions that can be built thanks to new features and improvements added to different Office and SharePoint products and technologies. There’s more possibilities to integrate Office and SharePoint to build rich client-server solutions using tools such as Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, InfoPath 2010, and Access 2010.

Some of you already had an opportunity to play with the Betas and write code, read lots of blogs, twitter feeds, and some MSDN articles and videos. Some others are eager to get the final release to start building solutions and are already starting to ramp-up. In either case, I realize there’s a lot of information out there already and it’s always helpful to get some advice on where to start.

I find it fascinating to learn new technologies, and I truly enjoy working on training content and article plans. For those eager to learn as well, I’ll take you along with me on a joyride of learning what’s new for developers on Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.

I’ve spent the last months working in content plans for upcoming MSDN articles, Visual How-tos, and MSDN site projects. Happily, there’s already plenty articles, code samples, and videos on our publishing pipe to cover the most interesting features and scenarios. We started releasing some content in October after the SPC 2009 and in November for Beta. We have much more to come in the following months and it’s a great time to catch-up on blogging as there’s so much to share in the following months. This are exciting times for Office and SharePoint developers!

With this blog post, I am starting a series of posts that will guide you through the most interesting 2010 features and resources available for developers. I’ll be tagging this series as learn2010.

I’ll start by introducing the top places/content I recommend if you want to learn more about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 development.

Web sites and training content for developers

While generic, the links above can help you understand the big picture. As we approach the launch, I will be drilling-down into more detailed info about developing solutions using specific features pertaining to key pillars of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 development. I’ll try and share more videos, links to articles, pointers to interesting blog posts, and code samples for each piece so you can continue to learn more about features that you find particularly interesting.